Economics focus

摘要

In the past 20 years or so, banking crises and financial instability have come around with depressing frequency and at considerable cost. According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, more than a dozen banking crises in the past 15 years have cost the countries afflicted 10% or more of their GDP. Latin America seems to suffer about once a decade. The miracle economies of East Asia were caught in the late 1990s. Not even rich countries are immune, as the Japanese have come to know only too well.